What I like about NBC Olympic broadcasts is when they cut to shots of Bode Miller's girlfriend at the bottom of the mountain every few seconds. Great stuff.
Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
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Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#32Just let me send you $20 for an Olympics "pass" and give me access to multiple streams so I can pick which events to watch — without commercials. Is that bad business? Because I'm afraid I am sitting out the Olympics this year. :-(
I suspect it would cost more than $20 to bypass the ads
Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#33If you're good enough at blocking competition, it doesn't matter how poorly you do the actual job. The "AT&T" philosophy. Last Olympics I paid any attention to was because I had a C band satellite dish and could browse the backhauls and unattended camera feeds. Must have been '96 in Atlanta.
> The "AT&T" philosophy.
If anyone reads this and is wondering what exactly it means, I highly recommend the book The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T by Steve Coll.
Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#34Best experience watching the Olympics: a hotel lobby in England. Complete coverage, no chatter, no delays, and no commercials.
BBC have lost the rights this year, sadly. They can only show a few things and Discovery have the majority of them, so I and am pretty sure many people I know will not be watching.
I think the BBC can only show 2 live events at a time, unlike the previous 2 Olympics where they had amazing live coverage of pretty much every event.
Can't help feeling this is a very very short-sighted move by the IOC (selling the European rights to Discovery), and will further dimish the prestige of the Games.
Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a condition of Taiwan entering the Olympics at all. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-26/taiwan-chinese-taipei... I wonder, whilst looking at Hong Kong, why Taiwan would be at all worried about the One Country, Two Systems rule...
Truly shows how oppressive Mainland China government has become.
> Truly shows how oppressive Mainland China government has become.
Or rather how much power they have to force their views internationally, even when those views are objectively unreasonable.
Here's another recent example: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/fast-furious-star-john-cen...
Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#36TFA is not well-informed. Maybe the NBC people should have better marketing, but the Olympics coverage is not terrible. If you have a basic cable or satellite package, you can sign into this app:
https://channelstore.roku.com/search/nbc+sports
Presumably some of the lesser TV appliances also have a similar app. If you don't subscribe to a basic pay TV package, maybe you could do a trial subscription to Hulu or something and sign in with that. With this app, one can watch the entirety of live and recorded events. Many of the live feeds will have "down time" between matches, rounds, etc. There are ads, which are especially annoying for "one-at-a-time" individual events like whitewater canoe slalom. I suspect it would be possible to pi-hole the ads.
Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a condition of Taiwan entering the Olympics at all. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-26/taiwan-chinese-taipei... I wonder, whilst looking at Hong Kong, why Taiwan would be at all worried about the One Country, Two Systems rule...
Truly shows how oppressive Mainland China government has become.
“Has become”? That’s international standard until Taiwan truly declares independence. Quote Wikipedia:
This dissension eventually came to a compromise when the term "Chinese Taipei" was first proposed in the Nagoya Resolution in 1979, whereby the ROC/Taiwan and the PRC/China recognize the right of participation to each other and remain as separate teams in any activities of the International Olympic Committee and its correlates. This term came into official in 1981 following a name change of Olympic Committee of the ROC to Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee.
Edit: great job downvoting when it doesn’t fit your narrative
Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was incredibly confused this year by Russia being "ROC" and Taiwan being "Chinese Taipei", given I'd always mentally associated "ROC" with Republic of China aka Taiwan.
Russia cheated with steroids / doping at a state level. So Russia itself was banned from the Olympics (their flag, their anthem, etc. etc.) The athletes shouldn't be punished however, so the athletes are allowed to get together to make their own group. At least, the 2021 athletes are not the same athletes who cheated years ago, so we should give them a chance at the world stage. Flying under the Olympic flag under a…
Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that the olympics should have picked a less confusing acronym for the Russian athletes.
Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#39Just let me send you $20 for an Olympics "pass" and give me access to multiple streams so I can pick which events to watch — without commercials. Is that bad business? Because I'm afraid I am sitting out the Olympics this year. :-(
I suspect it would cost more than $20 to bypass the ads
Even at an inflated rate of $50 per 1000 impressions (which is higher than most broadcast TV charges), $20 should let you bypass 400 commercials. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Re: Why does NBC make it so difficult to watch the Olympics?
#40Not to mention that NBC not showing the proper flag for Taiwan as they reached third place overall gold medals. I’ve got better things to do than to watch state-sponsored selective narratives.
It’s not NBC, it’s the olympics, and it’s been like this for years as part of a compromise that makes everyone unhappy except the athletes who might otherwise not get to compete at all.